Nevertheless, not a day has gone by without me thinking about the horrors of life under the Tories — and their assault not just on the disabled but also on the unemployed and the underpaid — and being close to despair at how my fellow citizens, in significant numbers, have embraced the filthy lies spewing from the lying lips of ministers and the merchants of hatred and division in the tabloid newspapers.

E-petitions need to secure 100,000 signatures within a year to make them eligible for a Parliamentary debate, and the target was reached with a week to spare.

The Parliamentary debate will be taking place on Thursday February 27, and, prior to the debate, the WOW petition campaigners are encouraging supporters to do the following:

Write to — or email — your local MP (you can find the details by using our Write to your MP tool) and we’ve produced a couple of suggested template letters here (outline) and here (detailed).

If you’re in London or willing and able to visit, campaigners will be watching the debate live, and will lobby MPs in the Central Lobby from 10.30am until the debate starts. There will also be a vigil outside the House of Commons next to Old Palace Yard, from 10.30am. I intend to be there.

The vote comes just ten days after the Guardian revealed that a leaked financial review from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) stated that “ministers across government are working together to build up competition to [Atos] by commissioning other private firms to add ‘further capacity’ to the assessment system. The DWP will then enable ‘these providers to take over the whole contract’ from Atos after the present agreement expires in 2015.”

On Friday, the Press Association followed up on the story, claiming that Atos was “seeking an early exit from its contract,” blaming death threats to its staff — which was almost unbelievably ironic, given that Atos’ assessments have led to numerous well-chronicled deaths, of some of the most vulnerable members of society, which is unforgivable.

Although this is good news, problems will remain until the entire assessment process is scrapped and re-thought intelligently and sensitively, as various other incompetent guns for hire — G4S, A4E, Serco, Capita — are queuing up to take over.

Although not speaking directly about the disabled, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, who is about to be made a cardinal by Pope Francis, addressed the horrors of austerity in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, and expanded on his comments to the Daily Telegraph when he criticised the government’s welfare reforms as “punitive.”

Archbishop Nichols said, “The voices that I hear express anger and despair … Something is going seriously wrong when, in a country as affluent as ours, people are left in that destitute situation and depend solely on the handouts of the charity of food banks.”

He added, “The moral challenge roots back to the principle that we have to regard and treat every single person with respect.”

To mark the news of Atos’ imminent removal as assessors of the disabled, two organisations who have worked tirelessly to oppose the reviews — Disabled People Against Cuts and the Black Triangle Campaign — issued a statement that I’m cross-posting below (with minor editorial changes of my own), as it is powerful, and also contains numerous links to articles demonstrating the horrors of Atos’s reign as the enormously well-paid facilitators of the government’s murderous disdain for the disabled.

Several years of campaigning have paid off in making more and more people realise that ATOS, the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) policies imposed by the ConDems are completely toxic, inhuman and abhorrent.

DPAC have been leading campaigns against ATOS, the WCA and DWP since 2010 including: visits to Triton Square (shiny headquarters of ATOS), feeding into the Channel 4 program ‘Dispatches: Britain on the Sick’ which revealed the horrendous system of getting as many people removed from support as possible, exposure of the devastation and misery, and the highly successful ATOS games in 2012 which saw ATOS shares drop in value and an increase in media attention against them. DPAC have occupied Caxton House (home of the DWP) and gathered outside the entrance of the DWP on many occasions, most recently in the 7 days of action ‘Reclaiming our Futures’.

Our sister group Black Triangle have fought tirelessly with us. Black Triangle has worked with us for over 3 years fighting and exposing continuous wrong doing and working on publicising regulations that can be used by GPs to prevent further harm to thousands of disabled people under the WCA regime. This month also saw a UK wide protest outside local ATOS centres organised by local groups. We’ve all been clear that it is the WCA itself that needs to be scrapped immediately.

The bizarre exit strategy ATOS have developed in identifying apparent physical threats on Facebook despite the growing lists of real deaths caused by the WCA regime is an outrageous insult to all those that have died and all those that have lost family members through this regime. It is an insult to those left without their homes, without money and needing to go to foodbanks. It is an insult to every person who has suffered worsening physical and mental health through this inhuman regime.

ATOS attempting to pull out of its contact represents only a partial victory. The alphabet corporations (G4S, A4E, SERCO, CAPITA) are already lining up to take over the multi-million profits and the mantle of the new Grim Reapers. The misery imposed by this Government and the DWP will continue as long as its heinous policies continue.

Goodbye to ATOS — but the WCA must also end. The reign of terror by this unelected Coalition Government which has awarded itself pay rises, cut taxes for those earning over £150,000 while piling punishment, poverty, misery and premature death on everyone else in its policies of rich against poor must end.

Make no mistake — We will continue to demonstrate against ATOS, now delivering the complete failure of PIP [the Personal Independence Payment, the replacement for Disability Living Allowance that has been severely criticised by disability campaigners] in which claims are being delayed by up to a year. We will demonstrate against any other company that takes over the WCA contract. We will continue to demand the immediate removal of the WCA, and the removal of this Government.

DPAC and Black Triangle demand:

That the WCA be ended with immediate effect to be replaced with a rigorous and safe system that does not cause avoidable harm to disabled people, those with chronic health issues, terminal illnesses or long term health issues. It is the WCA – the assessment itself – that is fundamentally flawed and must end now as called for by the British Medical Association (BMA), and the Royal College of Nursing.

That the UK Government at Westminster and the opposition follow the Scottish Government’s pledge that private for-profit companies are removed entirely from having anything to do with the assessment of disabled people. This area of public policy belongs firmly within the NHS and the public sector.

That all support and commend the initiative being led by Black Triangle in union with DPAC to work together with the BMA to ensure that GPs are able to flag up a substantial risk of harm to disabled people, those with chronic health issues, terminal illnesses or long term health issues at the very outset of the WCA process. The complete lack of any such mechanism to assess and flag up complex risk under the current regime has given rise to countless tragedies which could thereby have been avoided.

That the PIP contract be removed from ATOS with immediate effect-they have shown errors beyond incompetence affecting thousands of disabled people, leading to waits of up to a year and leaving people without income or food.

We’ll celebrate Atos’ realisation that the WCA contract has always been poisonous, but we won’t rest or stay quiet. Atos’ absence from the WCA regime will not allow us forget the evil we have endured:

The success of appeals against Atos’ decisions is around 40% when claimants appeal without any support, and up to 70% when claimants are supported by trained advocates. See the Citizens Advice Scotland report, “Unfit for Purpose.”

7 Responses

It’s also worth noting that, in October, the government changed the rules regarding appeals against assessments finding disabled people “fit for work,” so that, as the Independent put it in an article three weeks ago:

“People with serious disabilities and health conditions are being left for weeks with no financial support by Government changes to benefit assessments.

“Under new rules introduced by the Department for Work and Pensions in October, anyone wanting to appeal a decision that they are fit to work first has to have all their paperwork looked at again, while receiving no sickness benefits. The Citizens Advice Bureau believes this will result in thousands of people being wrongly forced to survive on no income at all.

“The Government said that this ‘mandatory reconsideration’ would cut down on bureaucracy and take just two weeks, but some disabled and sick people are being wrongly assessed and left with no support for months on end.”